West Virginia quarterback Pat White, right, is helped to his feet by a trainer after getting hurt during the team's 21-13 loss to South Florida during a college football game Friday night Sept. 28, 2007, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
as a good catholic boy, i am a firm believer in hope.
the hope for eternal salvation. the hope for redemption. the hope for conversion.
as a fan of west virginia university football, however, i am also convinced of the existence of bad hope.
this is the kind of hope that exists when your team is down by 8 points with less than two minutes left in a game and you still believe that a miracle yet exists that somehow amid the swirling morass of faulty planning and just piss-poor luck, your team will reverse its fortunes and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
i witnessed this tonight as wvu's national title hopes went down in a sea of south florida linebackers setting up camp in the mountaineer backfield for four quarters.
having watched mass ejections of key players except for the chief offender (on the other side, natch), last second punt blocks and botched handoffs on the opponent's 1-yard line returned for game-winning touchdowns, i am used to disappointments.
but, in real life, i've found that there haven't been too many disappointments i've experienced where there wasn't at least the kernel of a lesson to be learned to apply to a future predicament.
i surely hope wvu's wonder boy coach rich rodriguez learned one this evening: pride goeth before the fall. (in our our case, five days after fall.)
in the first game of the season, when the mountaineers' running attack was stymied by mid-american conference opponent western michigan in the first half, coach rod came out in the second half passing to crack open our opening-day opponent and an eventual lashing by land and air.
he said it himself, that he was stubbornly sticking to his rushing game plan despite its evident lack of success. but he saw the light at the half and pulled out what had been a close game.
this game, against south florida's bulls, with the national title on the line, he didn't see it after 15 minutes of play.
and we paid the price.
it took the injury to his starting quarterback late in the first half to make rodriguez alter his game plan from ground to air -- and, barring the errors of inexperience, it might have paid off.
but it was too little, too late.
we ran out of clock before the bulls ran out of momentum and we went down, not in flames, but in the suffocating smoke of defeat -- the kind of slow death long-suffering mountaineer fans know too well.
we seem to have traded in self-destruction (turnovers, pointless penalties) with self-delusion -- the refusal to accept that one's grand scheme is not the ultimate weapon until it is too late.
funny thing is that i almost bought into it -- that coach rod's space theories really would work regardless of circumstance. the problem was that we couldn't pull off the perfect execution necessary in the face of a determined, unforgivingly speedy foe.
at least we know what we need to accomplish if we are ever to claim the mythical crown of national football champion.
thus, i employ the mantra that all adherents to bad hope invariably proclaim after what should be soul-shattering setbacks: wait 'til next year.
